Pelsaert Island is one of the islands of the

Pelsaert Group The Pelsaert Group is the southernmost of the three groups of islands that make up the Houtman Abrolhos island chain. it consists of a number of islands, the largest of which are Gun Island, Middle Island, and Pelsaert Island. The g ...

, which is the southernmost of the three groups of islands that make up the Houtman Abrolhos island chain in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

. Nominally located at , it consists of a number of islands, the largest of which are

Gun Island Gun Island is one of the larger islands in the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos, in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. It is nominally at , about north and east of Half Moon Reef and is a flat limestone outcrop of abou ...

, Middle Island, and Pelsaert Island itself. The group and island is named by the captain of HMS Beagle, which was charting the area, after the commodore Francisco Pelsaert of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

trading fleet whose ship, the " Batavia" got wreched at sank at the Wallabi island group to the north. The captain saw a wreck on the island, mistakenly assumed it was the Batavia and named it after Pelsaert. The island is a significant bird site. The island and group contains the most southerly true

coral reefs A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. C ...

in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

References

* {{WesternAustralia-geo-stub

See also

References